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Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Welcome to Twisted Top Pottery

Welcome to Twisted Top Pottery! As this is my first post, I would like to formally introduce myself, my name is Mark Barta, I currently reside in Kansas City, KS, and I have been practicing ceramics for the past 10 years. I first fell in love with wheel throwing in High School where I took as many ceramics classes as I could. I later studied Ceramics in college at Kansas State University under the direction of Yoshiro Ikeda.

I mainly create pottery on the wheel and create both functional and sculptural works. The name Twisted Top Pottery comes from my take on the bottle form, I throw a bottle shape on the wheel and then alter the top of the form to bring movement and flow to the piece. I recently have completed work on my own studio in the basement of my house and am excited to be creating works of art in my new studio.

My goals for this blog are to share my pieces of ceramic art with the World, gain valuable feedback on my pieces to further grow in my artist direction, and to share tips and techniques I have learned over the years of study. I usually create wheel thrown pieces throughout the week and fire over the weekend every other weekend. I will update this blog on Sunday's in the afternoon with either pieces of work or ceramic related content, sometimes both.

Displayed to the left is my first piece that I would like to share. This piece is an example of my signature Twisted Top Bottle form, it is glazed with Spectrum's Low Fire Burnt Sugar and Mayco's Copper Adventurine, with accents of Mayco's Magic Flow glaze.

The circle followed by a trail of copper is a decorative mark I am currently working and is in it's early stages, I will be working to evolve this decorative mark over the next few weeks.